Collective Voice

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Collective Voice is a term coined in US labor economics for a collective medium ( trade union , works council ) that expresses the interests and complaints of employees towards management.

Building on Albert O. Hirschman's conceptual distinction between exit and voice , labor economists Richard R. Freeman and James L. Medoff speak of “two faces of the unions”: they see one in their monopoly on the labor markets, the other in their collective voice that brings dissatisfaction and demands of employees to the attention of management. Freeman and Medoff draw the conclusion from their extensive empirical studies that the negative effects of monopolized labor are compensated for or even exceeded by the positive effects of collective voice (for example in the form of higher job satisfaction and productivity and lower fluctuation ).

This argument, which is essentially based on the model of company negotiations between trade unions and management, which is typical for the USA, can be transferred to the works council for Germany , as Freeman and Lazear (1995) did. In Germany, the collective voice of employees is anchored in the Works Constitution Act through co-determination rights.

In the economic theory of participation Hanoverian labor economists, this model is of central importance.

literature

  • Richard B. Freeman & Edward P. Lazear : An Economic Analysis of Works Councils. In: Joel Rogers & Wolfgang Streeck (Eds.): Works Councils: Consultation, Representation, and Cooperation in Industrial Relations. Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago 1995. pp. 27-50.
  • Richard B. Freeman & James L. Medoff: What Do Unions Do? Basi Books, New York 1984.
  • Albert O. Hirschman : Exit, voice and loyalty. 1970. German: Migration and contradiction. Reactions to decline in performance in companies, organizations and countries. Mohr, Tübingen 1974, ISBN 3-16-335251-0
  • Ulrich Arnswald: Hirschman's theory of exit, voice, and loyalty reconsidered. Europ. Inst. For Internat. Affairs, Heidelberg 1997, ISBN 3-933179-00-9